CES 2010 – Light Peak

I was overwhelmed by the interest received on my initial post on Light Peak a few months ago. Plenty of questions and ideas were raised on the potential of a single IO port for multiple protocols and support for power; all over an optical connector. Clearly there is a lot of excitement surrounding high speed optics, and the many benefits that can come to compute platforms we all use today.

With that said, I wanted to bring Light Peak up for some discussion again as it has just been demonstrated in Paul Otellini’s keynote at CES ’10 as a link for high bandwidth 3-D video. I thought it might be a good time to provide an update on where Light Peak stands, and share a little bit more information.

So what’s New?

In the few months since Intel Developer Forum (IDF), we have been able to show an integration of Light Peak modules into a desktop system and monitor. At IDF the solution we were showing was an engineering version which was an early engineering prototype. One of the important things about Light Peak, in addition to high speed and multi-protocol support, is its ability to reach consumer form factors, and at CES we are showing how a standard normal form factor system can be equipped with this technology.

Additionally, as we move forward with the industry to ensure that Light Peak will evolve into a well supported standard, we have some additional supporters for the technology to help drive the vision and success of the technology. More announcements of support as well as standards activities will be coming over the coming months and quarters, but progress continues!

Driving a new IO technology standard will take time, but it’s key to make sure the final solution will meet the industries needs both from a cost and feature standpoint.

In other news, an exciting development for Light Peak was the announcement by PC Magazine that Light Peak won a technical excellence award for 2009. Very exciting!

Hopefully, many of you reading had a chance to attend CES and see Light Peak silicon in action, but for those who didn’t, please see the link below for more information.

18 Responses to CES 2010 – Light Peak

Can you provide some additional information…
1. Will this be only external or will there be protocols for intra- & cross-board connections.
2. Is the multi-protocol connection going to support different protocols or is it going to act like a physical bridge that takes multiple inputs and gives them back on the other side.
3. Will there be UEFI & BIOS level drivers, or will just UEFI.
4. Will there be a promoters group and an open standard (at least on the physical level).
5. Can you verify that this tech came from the optical work from intel labs over the last 10? years.
Thanks.

Do you happen to know if the full video from Paul Otellini’s keynote is online anywhere? I didn’t really get a chance to catch anything from CES ’10.
Light Peak sounds crazy. I’d love to be able to transfer an entire blu-ray movie (as the example used in the video) to another computer in my house in less than 30 seconds. I do a lot of video editing and would love this capability in my home.
Otellini said we could expect to see this technology in about a year – I wonder how much it will cost.

Big big question: which kind of fiber is being planned? Glass or Plastic?
Glass fiber is far to fragile, and plastic doesn’t have enough bandwidth.
Is this is to be a CE product, it must be physically resistant.

I’m an engineering student in INDIA,impressed at light peak technology
a new advancement in silicon photonics
i’m preparing a technical paper presentation
about light peak
Would please help me with resources which might help me sir.